Assemblywoman Who Authored Inmate Search Bill Frustrated By Inaction

STOCKTON (CBS13) – A local lawmaker met for the first time with “Speed Freak Killer” Wesley Shermantine on death row recently, but she’s still forced to wait in the effort to find more victims.

“It’s very frustrating, very frustrating,” Assembly member Cathleen Galgiani said in an interview with CBS13’s Laura Cole.

A new law she authored would allow the convicted killer to leave San Quentin’s death row long enough to help investigators find more victims. But so far, that hasn’t happened.

Galgiani says she’s fed up with waiting. It’s been six months since a plan was devised to bring Shermantine out to recover possible victims of the killing spree, and so she now has a plan of her own.

So when is he going to get out?

“I’ve been asking that question myself,” she said, “and let me tell you if it doesn’t happen soon, I’m going to take the bill in hand with the signature from the governor myself and I’m going to tell the director of corrections, ‘Look, I want him taken out now.’

“He wants to go. He says he wants to go.”

Galgiani met with Shermantine for the first time face to face Sunday.

“We talked about his past and how much he regrets getting into meth,” she said.

During their talk, Shermantine revealed new sites to search but she’s frustrated law enforcement hasn’t removed him from death row to help in the recovery efforts of more victims.

“It feels as though it is a struggle as to who’s in charge and who’s in control and it shouldn’t be about that,” she said.

So far, Shermantine’s maps and clues have led investigators to recover the remains of five people believed to be the victims of him and “Speed Freaks” partner Loren Herzog decades ago.

Four are now identified and families finally know what happened to their loved ones.

Galgiani now wants to help others have the answers they’ve been searching for desperately for decades.

“It seems as though the victims’ concerns and their fears and the torture they are going through has been put at the bottom of the list,” she said.

Shermantine has drawn the map to spots of potential victims, but there hasn’t been any digging for months.

Now Galgiani is mapping out her plan to make sure Shermantine will get to help in that search, one way or another.